"The Power of Trees," a slim new volume from Trinity University Press, is dense with information, as dense as heartwood, which can be "as hard as steel" in some species.

"Instead of the usual nature book, with big color photos and a lot of text, we wanted to communicate as if the reader was on a walk in the woods with a scientist and a photographer," Charles J. Katz Jr. said recently by telephone from his home in Palo Alto, Calif. "The reader is seeing the landscape through my eyes and listening to Gretchen talk."

Katz, whose elegant black-and-white photographs in "The Power of Trees" are perfectly synchronized with the conversational prose of Stanford University biologist Gretchen C. Daily (whom Katz calls "a rock star of conservation"), is a retired attorney whose family has "long deep roots in San Antonio" — tree pun totally intended.

Katz's grandfather, Sid Katz, a successful oilman, came to San Antonio in the 1920s, and his father, Charles Sr., followed in his dad's footsteps. Both were key to the development of the South Texas Medical Center, where they have streets named for them. Katz's mother, Dorothy, was influential in local art circles as owner of the Sol del Río Gallery in Alamo Heights. Charles Sr. also was a WWII photographic intelligence officer.

"He taught me how to use a camera as a kid," said the 64-year-old Katz Jr., who has made most of his life in the Northwest. "He had me in the darkroom when I was 10 years old. I was photographer for the Hoof Print at Alamo Heights High School my freshman year. I always had a camera in my hands, and I owe that to my dad. Photography has been a lifelong passion."

For "The Power of Trees," Katz teamed with Daily on those walks in the woods a few years ago in the Skagit River valley of Washington state.

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The collaboration came about as a result of their work together on the Natural Capital Project, a conservation organization that develops and provides practical ecosystem services concepts and tools all over the world.

"We got to talking about the difficulty of communicating science to the general public," Katz said. "So the book is aimed at a general audience."

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A few facts about trees

• Trees come in at least 60,000 varieties.

• The tallest known tree on Earth is a coast redwood (Sequoia sempervirens) that towers 379.1 feet above the forest floor in Northern California.

• Over their some 400-million-year history, trees have staked their claim in nearly every terrestrial environment, from windswept expanses of sand to craggy cliff faces.

• When forms of algae, from which trees eventually evolved, first moved onto land 450 million years ago, their biggest challenges were gravity and thirst. Trees escaped these constraints with two revolutionary adaptations: vessels for conducting water up against the force of gravity, and lignin for making the hard and rigid trunk that supports these vessels.

• After trees, Earth waited 165 million years before the first mammals appeared. And another 145 million years before the first monkeylike creatures swung from branch to branch in treetops.

• Trees use sunlight to drive six fundamental elements - carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur - that together make up 95 percent of all living tissue in the biosphere, the thin layer of life at Earth's surface.

• Through fine roots, trees draw water from underground, some from depths of more than 200 feet.

• Leaves are nature's most sophisticated solar energy systems. Through delicate pores, they take up carbon dioxide from the air and cleave it into carbon and oxygen, releasing the oxygen that we and all other animals need to breathe.

• Some trees clearly can talk to one another, though no one knows how widespread this ability is. When attacked by insects or other predators, certain trees emit airborne chemicals that signal trouble to downwind trees, which in turn boost their own production of chemical defenses.

• The record in trunks goes to the Great Banyan Tree, a single individual in Calcutta, India, with about 3,000 trunks, all connected above ground and spanning 1.5 acres.

• One Aspen colony in Utah, called Pando, comprises 47,000 trees - genetically identical stems connected underground by a massive root system. Pando is thought to be the heaviest organism on Earth, at 7,275 tons.

— Gretchen C. Daily

Daily sees the book as an opportunity for readers to "make sense of the connections between our own well-being and trees."

"So many of these connections," she explained via email, "are invisible in our complex and rushed modern lives. Yet they are deep, and seeing them can create a sense of awe and belonging."

"The Power of Trees" is a quick, fascinating read, full of memorable facts and images on the profound effect trees have on the Earth and mankind.

For instance, did you know that our ancestors lived in trees for 80 million years, which not only helped us developed stereo eyesight and three-dimensional perception, but good eye-hand coordination and dexterity?

Or that Antonio Stradivari violins are so sought after because he produced instruments "from trees grown in the middle of the Little Ice Age (1550-1850), a period of longer winters and cooler summers — and thus used wood with slower, more even growth"?

Katz hopes the book will inspire people to look at the forest — and the trees. Notably, urban trees.

"There is more effort now in the conservation movement to pay attention to urban trees," he said. "San Antonio has some great trees, but I think in the urban environment, the public generally ignores them. Gretchen's approach to conservation is to look at what ecology means to people, how it is important to human well-being."

Katz sees the power of trees in their ability to remind us of "the interconnectedness of all things on Earth, this giant cycle of the planet."

"Secondly, they just move me aesthetically," he added. "I'm always taking pictures of trees. They can get under your skin."

The collaboration between Katz and Daily was "irresistible," Trinity University Press director Barbara Ras said.

"The way the photographs and text engage each other is just so eloquent," she said. "The book informs, illuminates and inspires, and in its quiet beauty reminds us that we depend on trees for our very breath."